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The group read has rather fallen by the wayside recently, as members have preferred to read their own book choices, but if you pick something that takes the fancy of a few others maybe it will havea new lease of life.

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I would certainly join in if a book took my fancy. It is always nice to be reading a book with others and to chat about it as we go along. The only problem with reading books alone is that you post a comment, either on an existing thread or if need be on a new one, and often get no reply. Readers who have read the book in the past rarely comment on books again so no discussion of the book takes place which, if I am honest, was one of the main reasons why I joined the group in the first place.

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I would certainly join in if a book took my fancy. It is always nice to be reading a book with others and to chat about it as we go along. The only problem with reading books alone is that you post a comment, either on an existing thread or if need be on a new one, and often get no reply. Readers who have read the book in the past rarely comment on books again so no discussion of the book takes place which, if I am honest, was one of the main reasons why I joined the group in the first place.

I try to comment on books I've read in the past if I feel I have anything worthwhile to add.

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I'm in if there is a book discussion, Tagesman used to set this up for us, but I think we have to make suggestions as to what genre or topic we might want to discuss then there would be a few books to choose from and we could vote on them.

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I do remember that Momac, and it was sad that it fizzled out. As Cp says group reading is one of the joys of being in something like BGO because we can all share our different reading of any book.

How about if any of us that are interested make one suggestion and see how it goes from there? It can be fiction or non-fiction and any genre.

Sounds fine to me BB. I don't have any suggestions at the moment, have been reading a lot of Rick Mofina's books and they are mystery/thrillers which always feature a journalist who seems to solve them, while interesting I sometimes find journalists are not my favourite people although Mofina's journalists are always ethical.

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I am from the U.S. but I'm living in Mexico. One of the few things I miss from the U.S. is my reading group. One of the things I enjoyed was that being a part of the group lead me to read books I wouldn't have read on my own. I have my preferred genre but the group often read books outside my normal interests. It was good for me. I would have drawn the line at romance novels but since the group was all men that never came up. We read what's called literature, western novels and once a collection of short stories with a western theme, books from WWII, historical novels, a few science fiction, a few horror or fantasy. We always had books recommended that were preaching about religion, sobriety, social issues, and we wisely avoided those. I have had favored authors who quit drinking and felt compelled to start preaching from The Big Book, and that's not the Bible if your not familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous. It gets rather tiresome. On the other hand, there have been some great books written that were little more than propaganda but darned good propaganda.

Once a year, we would meet and members could recommend books, as many as they wanted, and give a little pitch for the book. If you suggested a book and it was accepted as a monthly read it was your responsibility to do some homework and lead the discussion. When we had our list of books for the next year our local bookstore would order them for us, at a discount, and we'd all get the package of books.

The group had about fifteen members. Most were associated with the university in our city. So, we took two months off in the summer so the professors could travel. A third month was the month for deciding on a list of nine books for the next nine months. It worked quite well.

We did have some general unwritten rules on selecting books. Since everyone in the group was working, we avoided books like War and Peace that were very lengthy. We also, wisely, I think, avoided popular books written by politicians. I remember one brief discussion of a book that everyone thought they should read, had tried to read and failed to finish. The suggestion was we try again but we didn't.

People who did not read the selection for the month were welcome to come to the meeting, eat the snacks, enjoy the company but they were not expected to participate in the discussion. You have to pay your way in to the discussion by reading the book.

I would have loved to have a reading group where I live in Mexico but I don't want to read novels in Spanish. Ordering books from the U.S., and actually getting them via the Post Office was daunting and, to be honest, there weren't that many expatriates here who wanted to read.

After 12 years of reading what I could find, and not doing too badly, I discovered Kindle. Suddenly, I could read what I wanted and the mechanism existed for all of us to get our books so we could read at the same time. That just left us with not many people who want to read.

It never happened but if the group had selected a book that I just couldn't read and didn't want to discuss I would have skipped a month. As I mentioned, being challenged to read a book that I would never have selected in a bookstore on my own was good for me.

For an online group, with a higher number of potential participants, there would be no reason we couldn't have more than one book a month with participants selecting one they would enjoy reading. If only ten people chose to read a specific book there could still be an excellent discussion.

Our group had rousing discussions, raging arguments and we never came to blows. I think we all enjoyed the discussions but I know I did. We were arguing about a book entitled Montana-1948 one night and the wife of the host for the evening motioned him into the kitchen. When he came back he was chuckling. "My wife wanted to know if she should call the police. I told her the troublemaker in the group was a police officer." We all laughed and went back to our argument. Additional police weren't needed.

I'll look forward to discussing books with the group. I will be limited to books that are among the 4,586,659 books currently being offered by Kindle-US. There are some books available in Kindle-UK that are not available in Kindle-US or Kindle-AU and so forth.

Edited July 21, 2016 by patrickt

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Welcome Patrickt - have a look around the forum at the various threads to see what interests you. We haven't had a group read for a while but are trying to get something going again, if you have any suggestions for a group read please post it. You'll be able to see on the forum menu the books we have read in the past as a group for discussion. I live in Canada and order books from Amazon.com all the time - Amazon.uk Kindle books are not available to me - don't know why but most of the books I want I can get from Amazon.com.

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I'd like to explore Nietzsche, anybody up for that challenge? Or how about Wuthering Heights (bet I'm the only one who hasn't read that) ? There is a thread on WH but none of us has posted on it.

I'd read Wuthering Heights. Actually read it when I was 12 trying to impress a teacher I had a crush on, but I remember nothing of it. Got an A on my book report, though I don't think teenage boys were Ms Bronte's target audience. And, for some unknown reason, Miss Gissendanner still wouldn't date me????????????.

But I've read a fair amount of Nietzsche and, for me, now, it doesn't bear revisiting.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Dan

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Okay, I'll recommend a book. Montana-1948 by Larry Watson. An enjoyable book that led to one of the most fractious book group discussions we had. This book is available from Amazon Kindle-U.S. for $9.40 USD.

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I have just bought All For Nothing by Kempowski, I think a couple of others on the forum were talking about it, iff and Clavain, I read the Amazon description and it looks like a good read. Maybe this could also be a suggestion?

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I'd read Wuthering Heights. Actually read it when I was 12 trying to impress a teacher I had a crush on, but I remember nothing of it. Got an A on my book report, though I don't think teenage boys were Ms Bronte's target audience. And, for some unknown reason, Miss Gissendanner still wouldn't date me.

But I've read a fair amount of Nietzsche and, for me, now, it doesn't bear revisiting.

Fair enough, why don't you make a suggestion? I think, if I may say, that Momac's had enough of stream of consciousness, for the time being. *laughs*

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All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski looks good. Another of my reading quirks is an interest in reading novels of other cultures written, preferably, by people from the culture. I went ahead and bought the book. It looks like a good read. I am older than most of the trees in the city where I live and have a real fear of running out of books to read before I die.